Arts

Frontiers in Puppet Theater

Grownup puppetry comes to Albuquerque for one night

A strange new breed of puppet makes its way to Barelas tonight. Hailing from Puerto Rico, Poncili Creacion is the latest experimental, transcendental, elemental act to grace the ring in the Tannex’s revolving circus of mysteries. What we know of their show “Sacred Candy” is wispy at best: Masks will be employed. Objects will be manipulated. Expectations will be subverted. Cosmic questions will be pondered via optics of encrypted meaning.

A glimpse from “Blind Date” by Josefus & Friends

“Sacred Candy” is a labyrinth you will enter in due time. First: Feast your eyes on “Blind Date,” a live puppet + projection sketch presented by Albuquerque’s own Josefus & Friends. Josefus is Joe Annabi, the multitalented member of former bands THEN EATS THEM and Yoda’s House, whose ingenious cartoons you may have spotted adorning the menu boards at Winning Coffee Co.

“I am a huge fan of the Henson style of puppetry, which was a style developed for television and film,” explains Annabi, who teaches puppet making for kids at the Zia Family Focus Center. “It's not just the technical side of the Henson school of thought that I find appealing, but also very much the aesthetic.” His “Blind Date” will feature two puppets of Annabi’s own creation, Foxi der Fuchs and Drabney Lodores (played by Jenni Bage).

The grown-up-only fun begins at 9pm at the Tannex (1417 Fourth Street SW). Cost is $5 to $10, sliding scale. “I think, between myself and Poncili, this will be a very unique performance for Albuquerque,” says Annabi. “Hopefully we can inspire more experimentation on the fringes of the usual.”